How can I manage my anxiety and meet work deadlines during a stressful week?

[ergospherical]

Two questions, but one thread will suffice.

1) Feeling very tired/foggy and haven't felt naturally motivated to work much at physics in the last couple of weeks, instead opting for distractions and a fair bit of idling. Is this a sign of burnout, or does this sound normal?

2) Due to some personal reasons, I've been (will be) extremely anxious for the last few days (the next few days). And then there's various (unrelated) work deadlines to meet fairly soon, but because of this pretty non-stop uneasy/restless state I've really had trouble getting around to doing these assignments & haven't been sleeping, etc.

Anything that's worked for you in the short-term to make this week less tense? Question 2) is more important than question 1), but possibly related (?). I've tried spending time outside, cooking, games etc. but these are only fleeting solutions!

 

[Astronuc]

1) Feeling very tired/foggy and haven't felt naturally motivated to work much at physics in the last couple of weeks, instead opting for distractions and a fair bit of idling. Is this a sign of burnout, or does this sound normal?

2) Due to some personal reasons, I've been (will be) extremely anxious for the last few days (the next few days). And then there's various (unrelated) work deadlines to meet fairly soon, but because of this pretty non-stop uneasy/restless state I've really had trouble getting around to doing these assignments & haven't been sleeping, etc.

Well, certainly interrupted/disrupted sleep, or restless sleep will lead to feeling foggy and/or tired, and stress-related anxiety will result in problems with sleep. Having many commitments/deadlines can cause one stress/anxiety, so it's important not to over-commit.

It is important to make time to relax and put things aside, and do something enjoyable and physical, e.g., walking in the woods, or in a flower garden, or somewhere one enjoys.

It is also important to recognize the sources of stress/anxiety and then put things in perspective, whereby one can lessen the stress/anxiety.

Distractions and idling is simply avoidance of matters that need attention, and usually, that may lead to additional stress/anxiety/worry.

It's not necessarily burnout, but certainly an accumulation of stress/anxiety/worry will lead to burnout.

Meditation might help. By meditation, I mean letting things go for the moment, clearing one's mind. It's a bit like being stuck on a problem one is trying to solve, and sometimes it's best to put aside, do something different, but fun, and coming back to the problem when the mind is less engaged, or troubled. Sometimes, while relaxing, the solution to a problem comes to one.

 

[fresh_42]

Strategies for stress​

Easy: just more workload than time to handle!

Two questions, but one thread will suffice.

1) Feeling very tired/foggy and haven't felt naturally motivated to work much at physics in the last couple of weeks, instead opting for distractions and a fair bit of idling. Is this a sign of burnout, or does this sound normal?

Have a read, it may be useful:

https://www.ams.org/publications/journals/notices/201707/rnoti-p718.pdf

2) Due to some personal reasons, I've been (will be) extremely anxious for the last few days (the next few days). And then there's various (unrelated) work deadlines to meet fairly soon, but because of this pretty non-stop uneasy/restless state I've really had trouble getting around to doing these assignments & haven't been sleeping, etc.

Anything that's worked for you in the short-term to make this week less tense? Question 2) is more important than question 1), but possibly related (?). I've tried spending time outside, cooking, games etc. but these are only fleeting solutions!

You need to sleep, say at least 6 hours, better 8. I use these to get tired
https://www.medpex.de/schlaf-beruhigung-nervenstaerkung/wick-zzzquil-gute-nacht-p16894643

Whatever you do, you can only do one thing at a time, so maybe you should make a list and prioritize your tasks. Then there is no other way than to proceed step by step. We have a saying "Eile mit Weile". It means "hurry with ease", although Google translates it as "haste makes waste". This is unfortunately true, either version.

 

[hutchphd]

Two questions, but one thread will suffice.

1) Feeling very tired/foggy and haven't felt naturally motivated to work much at physics in the last couple of weeks, instead opting for distractions and a fair bit of idling. Is this a sign of burnout, or does this sound normal?

2) Due to some personal reasons, I've been (will be) extremely anxious for the last few days (the next few days). And then there's various (unrelated) work deadlines to meet fairly soon, but because of this pretty non-stop uneasy/restless state I've really had trouble getting around to doing these assignments & haven't been sleeping, etc.

Anything that's worked for you in the short-term to make this week less tense? Question 2) is more important than question 1), but possibly related (?). I've tried spending time outside, cooking, games etc. but these are only fleeting solutions!

I find the most useful short term solution to be hard physical exercise. I mean aerobic sweaty push your limits stuff. Better it be a contest, too, for the psychology. Basketball? Raquetball? Squash? Soccer (or one of the weird indoor variants). Of course one of the various torture machines can substitute. A hard cross-country ski works too but that is unlikely I would guess. But a good hard half hour (minimum).
Seriously for me this works two ways: the immediate release from the actvity itself and my sleep is always much improved. Of course this is hard-won knowledge and I didn't always successfully follow the program. Good wishes...its never as bad as you fear.

 

[Choppy]

Certainly this can be a stressful time of year, and that fact that we're going on two years into a pandemic certainly doesn't help. Unfortunately I don't think there's any magical cure all for stress.

Many strategies that can help to mitigate stress are long term. While perhaps less likely to help in the immediate moment, sometimes the experience of going through one of life's pinch points can serve as a trigger for building some long term strategies for resilience.

1. A lot of stress in life stems from situations where we're made to feel responsible for things we have little to no control over. Mitigating this can be a challenge, but sometimes it can be important to take a step back and spend some time considering the bigger picture of your life.
   Consider your long term goals. And perhaps re-define them in terms of those factors you have control over. As an example, consider graduate school admission. You can't control a given admission committee's decision. But what you can control are factors such as: the quality of the application, the research you do into the program, the effort you put into your studies, the research opportunities you capitalize on as an undergraduate, etc.
2. In the context of your longer term goals, make sure to establish your priorities. Inevitably you'll end up in situations where you have to make tough decisions where outcomes won't be guaranteed and there's no clear right or wrong answer. This generates stress. But when you can view these problems against a set of well-established priorities, it often becomes easier to select the path that's best for you at the time.
3. Recognize with a lot of big decisions there are no perfect answers. I think a lot of people are brought up to believe that all situations have solutions that are either correct or incorrect. The age-old dilemma of "physics or engineering" faced by students who enjoy STEM trying to choose an undergraduate degree is an example. Often with multi-objective optimization problems, the best you can do is get yourself onto a Pareto front where advances in one objective come at the consequence of deficits in another.
4. Recognize the people around you who add to your stress and avoid them. I know sometimes you can't completely block them out, but you can come up with strategies for controlling your interactions like recognizing those behaviors that stress you out and minimizing them. I once had a friend who stressed me out after exams by intensely scrutinizing and wanting to compare every answer. I found it really helped to reduce that post-exam anxiety when I made a rule that we didn't talk about exams until after we got the marks back.
5. Take good care of yourself. By this I mean get adequate sleep and exercise. Eat a nutritious and well-balanced diet. Allow yourself down time. Socialize. And again, this is a long term-strategy. You're going to end up doing a lot better on that exam the morning after you have one sleepless night if all your other nights have been restful.
6. When you find yourself in non-constructive down time... mindless internet surfing, doom scrolling, watching TV that you're not interested in... and otherwise procrastinating, sometimes that's your body's way of telling you that you need to build some down time into your schedule.
7. To the extent that you can, work in time to read up on things that interest you for their own sake. While this might not seem like it does much, sometimes a little free-reading is all you need to remember why you love the field you're in.

 

[hutchphd]

And peruse PF with an eye to relieving someone else's stress!

 

[MathematicalPhysicist]

You can always go nuts like George and Batman:



Don't burnout like I did... :-(
Several times...